Games like XCOM 2, and what each does with the Avenger
Playze Staff · Nov 8, 2026
Concealment is the thing XCOM 2 added that nobody else quite copied: the first move of a mission is free, and the whole fight is shaped by how you spend it. Players looking for games like XCOM 2 usually want that specific feeling back — a squad you have named, a turn you have to earn, and a campaign that keeps score of everyone you lost getting there. Seven games deliver pieces of it, each one rebuilding a different part of what Firaxis put together.
| Game | Strategy layer | Low | Date | Store |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xenonauts 2 | Global base network | $6.66 | 29 Oct | Eneba |
| Phoenix Point | Globe plus three factions | $3.60 | 28 Oct | YUPLAY |
| Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters | Base and research | $5.42 | 8 Oct | YUPLAY |
| Jagged Alliance 3 | Open country map | $3.36 | 15 Oct | Gameseal |
| BATTLETECH | Contracts and 'Mech bay | $7.16 | 8 Oct | Eneba |
| Mutant Year Zero | Hub, no globe | $5.61 | 30 Oct | GAMIVO |
| Into the Breach | Run-based, no base | $2.78 | 13 Oct | Driffle INC |
The Avenger is the piece most of these rebuild
Xenonauts 2
Goldhawk's sequel is the closest thing on PC to the half of XCOM that happens between missions. Its own description is of a multinational organisation working from the shadows, expanding and managing a covert network of bases across the globe, and that is exactly what it is: interception, research, air cover, and the slow dread of watching a region's panic rise while your transport is on the wrong continent. The setting is 2009 with the Cold War still running and the Berlin Wall still standing, which gives the tech tree somewhere colder to start from than XCOM's gleaming ADVENT cities.
Where it parts company with Firaxis is the ground combat, which is unapologetically old-fashioned: larger maps, slower approaches, no concealment opener to set up a perfect alpha strike. People coming straight from XCOM 2 often find the first few missions ponderous before the air-war layer hooks them. It reached 1.0 in April 2026, and Xenonauts 2 has been sliding more or less continuously through late October in our readings, which is rare enough on this list to be worth knowing.
Larger maps and no free opening turn mean the approach matters more here than the ambush. (Official Steam screenshot)
Phoenix Point
Julian Gollop designed the original X-COM, and this is his return to it. The headline difference is free aiming: instead of a single hit chance per shot, you see the target's body parts and can shoot a specific one, which turns a Scylla's armoured head or a weapon arm into a decision rather than a dice roll. Enemies mutate across the campaign in response to how you have been killing them, so a strategy that worked in month two is deliberately less effective in month six.
The globe layer carries three factions — the corporatist New Jericho, the hesitant Synedrion and the fanatical Disciples of Anu — each with its own goals and its own opinion of you, and the diplomacy between them does real work. It is messier than XCOM 2 and considerably less polished, and the interface still shows its troubled launch; what you get for tolerating that is a campaign with more moving parts than Firaxis ever attempted. Vehicles, aircraft and whole bases can be taken from you by a faction you annoyed, and the Pandoran threat keeps growing whether or not you are ready. Worth knowing before you buy anything: Phoenix Point is on Game Pass, and our Game Pass round-up covers when the subscription beats a purchase.
Free aiming means you pick the limb, not just the target, which changes how armour works. (Official Steam screenshot)
Bloom, timers and other ways to be rushed
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters
Complex Games took XCOM 2's structure — base, research, missions chosen off a map — and inverted its instinct. The Bloom is a spreading plague that rots worlds while you deliberate, so the pressure is not a per-mission timer but a campaign-wide one, and sitting in cover to wait out a bad turn costs you planets. Your Grey Knights are also far more durable than XCOM rookies, which means aggression is rewarded rather than punished.
The narrative was written by Black Library author Aaron Dembski-Bowden, and it is noticeably better written than a licensed tactics game needs to be. Our window for Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters is one of the flattest here: 25 readings and barely any movement across them, which tells you not to sit waiting for a collapse.
Grey Knights absorb punishment XCOM soldiers cannot, so the tactical read is closer to pressing an advantage. (Official Steam screenshot)
Games like XCOM 2 that hand you the whole map
Jagged Alliance 3
Haemimont swapped the geoscape for a country. Grand Chien is a real map you move across sector by sector, holding mines for income and hiring mercenaries who have opinions about each other and about you. The combat is turn-based and unforgiving in the XCOM manner, but the layer above it is closer to a light strategy game than a mission-select screen, and the writing leans comic where Firaxis leans grim.
Mercenary contracts expire, which does the job XCOM's doom clock does without ever feeling arbitrary. At 89 per cent across more than 15,000 Steam reviews it is the best-liked game on this list, and our record for Jagged Alliance 3 has been steady rather than falling.
BATTLETECH
Harebrained Schemes built the version of this where the campaign layer is a business. You run a mercenary outfit in 3025, negotiate contracts with feudal lords, and keep a stable of ageing BattleMechs repaired on money you may not have — salvage from a won fight is often worth more than the payment. Damage is persistent and expensive, so a victory that cost you two arms is a loss on the balance sheet.
Salvage is the real reward, which makes how you destroy a 'Mech matter as much as whether you do. (Official Steam screenshot)
It is slower per turn than anything else here, and the pilot injuries bite. BATTLETECH is on Game Pass too, which makes it the cheapest experiment on this list if you already subscribe.
Concealment that lasts longer than one turn
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
The Bearded Ladies turned XCOM 2's free opening move into the whole exploration layer. You creep through a post-human Sweden in real time, picking off isolated enemies silently before anyone raises an alarm, and only then does the turn-based fight begin. Done well, a camp of eight is a sequence of three fights instead of one disaster. Mutant Year Zero is also much shorter than the others, which is the point.
Stealth happens in real time here, so the ambush is set up before any turn order exists. (Official Steam screenshot)
Dice removed from the equation entirely
Into the Breach
Subset Games made the anti-XCOM: every enemy telegraphs its attack a turn ahead and nothing is hidden, so a lost mech is a mistake you made rather than a ninety-per-cent shot that missed. Runs last an evening, and the Advanced Edition update added five mech squads, dozens of weapons and an Unfair difficulty for people who have solved the rest. Anyone who has rage-quit XCOM 2 over a point-blank miss should try Into the Breach first.
The War of the Chosen launch trailer, from the official XCOM channel, which is the expansion most of these games are really being compared against.
Where a Commander should go next
Start with Xenonauts 2. It is the one that rebuilds the half of XCOM 2 that people actually miss — the globe, the interceptors, the research race — and it is a 2026 game rather than a 2018 one, so it is still being worked on. Phoenix Point is the better pick only if free aiming sounds more interesting to you than air defence, and if you want the campaign to fight back against your habits.
If you already pay for Game Pass, try Phoenix Point there before buying anything, because it costs you nothing to find out whether Gollop's version suits you. On price, the one worth noting is Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters: 25 readings in our window and almost no spread across them, so waiting for it to move has not been rewarded lately. For the wider picture on where tactics games sit, our strategy round-up and the note on what a historical low means are both useful, and which XCOM to buy covers the series itself.
We wrote this from store pages, published reviews and our own price record, not from playing each game for this piece. Some store links on our game pages are affiliate links, so playze may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.